Backwards Glances
by mamblymoo
Summary: A series of drabbles set in the Hindsight-verse. Banter and bothering ensue. Written for the DA2 Anders prompt group on the BSN.


**_A/N: _**_A short piece for the BSN DA2 Anders Prompt group. This is set somewhere during Hindsight Chapter 7, after the first night in the Thaig. _

**Misguided**

The last thing Anders thought as the flames leapt towards him was that letting off a fireball in a narrow tunnel was a trifle... misguided.

Of course, the sight of her bending over him as he came to again a minute or so later was more than worth it.

"Maker's arse!" she was cursing, half-straddling one of his legs as she cradled his head between her palms, leaning round to inspect the back of his head for wounds. "That genlock just came out of nowhere and... Oh Anders, I am _so_ sorry!"

He pushed her off him gently, feeling aware, not for the first time in the Deep Roads, of the effect her proximity was having on him. "It's fine," he said, his tongue a little thick in his mouth as he reached around and healed himself briefly. "_Really_, Ariadne. Nothing wounded but my pride."

She sat back on her heels, looking into his face with those blue eyes filled with concern. She gasped.

Standing behind her, Varric chuckled warmly. "You need to look in a mirror Blondie," he drawled.

Healer's fingers swept over his chin, his nose, his eyelids, his...

"Maferath's _balls_, Hawke! My _eyebrows_!"

-X-

Conversation in the camp later was... awkward.

"You look ridiculous," Fenris grunted, as he watched Anders smoothing the salve over his tingling, and decidedly _hairless_ brows.

The mage snorted. "_I_ look ridiculous?" he retorted, pointing a green-painted fingertip in the elf's general direction, "Yours are a completely different colour to the rest of your hair!"

From the other side of fire, Varric's evident amusement quelled the rising argument. "What I don't understand is why you don't just magic them back?" the dwarf asked as his laughter subsided.

"Because," Ariadne said, cutting the healer off before he had a chance to respond as she re-entered the firelight, "if he can't see what he's doing, he'll end up with a pair of furry caterpillars." She sat down beside him putting the basin down in front of them. "In other news," she said cheerfully, "we have mushrooms for dinner!"

"Again?" the elf growled bitterly. "Those putrescent fungi were foul the first time we ate them."

"Not to mention the second," Varric joined sourly. "Or the third."

"Because starvation tastes so much better I suppose?" Anders interjected sharply, raising one lurid green strip of salve.

Ariadne sniggered. "You tell them, Anders," she said, looking anywhere _but_ at his missing supercilia.

The older mage grumbled, wiping his potion-covered fingers on the inside of his robes before moving to begin work on their dinner.

-X-

Later, as Anders took the first watch at the edge of the cavern, she was only pretending to sleep.

"No," he said suddenly, looking sternly down at her.

"You don't even know what I was going to say," she grumbled, peering at him out of one half-opened eye.

"Stimulating hair follicles is tricky," he replied. "If I can't trust myself to do it properly there's no way I'll be trusting you."

"I thought you said I was getting better?" she asked, sitting up and rubbing her face in sleepy fashion, her days-dirty ruby hair still glimmering slightly in the light from the fire.

"Better is relative," he whispered, glancing behind them at the others. "Just because you can mend a bit of broken skin doesn't mean you can channel your energy in to a full on re-growth."

"Are you suggesting I can't control my magic?" she said irritably.

He frowned. "Are you genuinely asking me that?"

She scowled. "That was a _miscalculation_," she hissed.

"And another one could leave me with a pair of small ginger beards protruding from my forehead like obscene tongues," he remarked wryly.

Her blue eyes narrowed. "Do you have some sort of problem with ginger hair?" she asked accusingly.

"W-what?" he stammered, feeling the colour draining from his cheeks. "I didn't... I mean... You're not even."

Ariadne shook her head disappointedly, her deep red hair swaying gently. "I knew it," she said sadly. "You're a _racist_."

He sputtered in protest. "I'm not!"

"You are!"

"I'm _not._"

"You _are_!"

"Not."

"Are."

"_Not_."

"Prove it."

Ariadne actually did a far better job on the re-growth then Anders was expecting. In fact, the job would have almost been unnoticeable had she not decided after finishing one of them that she would leave the other eyebrow as it was: 'To teach you true suffering of a ginger.'

Having endured years of living with siblings, a Mabari and a meddlesome mother, she seemed to find it remarkably easy to fall asleep despite his many, fiercely whispered protests. The sight of her there, peaceful and curled up beside him as the night wore on, was both a comfort and a terrible temptation.

'_We had agreed.'_

'I know.'

'_It does not do for us to play her games.'_

'I know.'

'_And yet you look at her.'_

'Yes.'

'_She is just a child. She has never known suffering.'_

'You underestimate her. She is beautiful. Extraordinary.'

'_You should desist.'_

'I know.'

'_This obsession is misguided.'_


End file.
